Weary with Toil
by the.future's.sold.out
Summary: The coffee in the red mug was scalding hot, but Jade brought it to her lips over and over again.


_She meets Cat in the ninth grade._

_ trusted no student to chose their own seat, so alphabetical order it was, with the As in the front and the Zs in the back. Naturally, the Vs and Ws followed suit somewhere along the way._

"_Hi, I'm Cat!" The redhead had blurted out, a thousand watt smile in place on her pretty face. She sat on the edge of her seat, her entire posture radiating energy._

"_Fine," Jade mumbled back, sipping at her coffee and keeping her eyes forward. She saw the other girl deflate in her peripheral vision. Jade smirked to herself._

_ began his first lesson after a brief introduction, jumping into proper sentence structure with an overhead note. Jade didn't bother writing anything down. She had been writing scripts since learning about the genre. She knew how a sentence worked._

_Sitting at the back of the class gave her an excellent view point for people watching. Most of her classmates were jotting down the note, but some stared off, their feet tapping and hands twitching to a melody buried deep in their mind. One of them was a boy, dark skinned with black braided hair, who made eye contact with Jade and smiled as he too served the room._

_Cat slid the torn corner of a lined piece of paper onto her desk._

What's your name?

_Jade rolled her eyes and glanced at the girl. She was writing out the note with diligence into a pink binder._

_Jade left the paper alone for a whole minute, simply out of spite, before she wrote back._

jade

_Cat finished a sentence on her note then read Jade's name, a smile growing across her features._

That's a pretty name_, she writes next._

_Jade read it and wished she hadn't. The note sits between them, looking heavy. Jade took a long sip from her coffee._

_But the redhead was unbothered by Jade's irresponsiveness, she wrote again, _Why aren't you writing down the note?

_Jade frowned at the words, sitting forward to write back, _I know how to write a sentence.

_Cat giggled at this and Jade's frown turned to a scowl. She put her hand up._

"_Yes, Miss...?" Mr. Walsh said from the front, most of the class following his eyesight to Jade._

"_West. May I go to the washroom?" Jade asked, ignoring all the eyes on her._

"_You may," the man responded, before moving on to talk about the paragraph._

_Jade got up and left the room, ignoring the lingering set of eyes on her back as she went._

"Jade!"

Jade threw her phone on the couch and stood at the beckon. She made her way out of the Valentine's living room, through the kitchen to the foyer where she climbed their curled staircase to the next floor. She passes two bedrooms and a bath before stopping at the doorway to a pink room.

Cat was bundled in blankets and propped against her headboard. Stuffed animals flocked around her, covering the surface of the bed. Cat sat with her laptop on her knees.

"Could you hand me my laptop charger thing?" Cat asked quietly, pointing to where the cables lie on her desk.

Jade raised her eyebrows. "You called me up here for that?" She growled, moving to hand them to the girl anyway. She swiped a few stuffed toys onto the ground and sat on the end of the bed as Cat twisted in her blankets to plug the cable into the closest outlet.

"No," Cat croaked, settling back down with a smile, plugging the other end of the cable into her laptop, "I wanted you to tell me a story."

Jade barked out a laugh, she said, "Yeah, not happening. Maybe when your walls aren't so violently pink. You know, I might actually be dying because of the colour in this room." She looked at her nails, examining them to distract her eyes away from Cat.

The redhead coughed into her arm for a moment, hunching forward, before falling back with a sigh. "Ok," she relented, her sickness having zapped the fight from her system.

Jade listened to Cat breathing through her mouth and tapping at her keyboard for a few minutes, pretending to pick at her black nail polish. Soon, however, unable to stop herself, Jade reluctantly dragged her eyes up the mountain of blankets, past the laptop screen, and to Cat's face.

The girl was without make up, pale in her illness, the bags under her eyes prominent. Her nose and upper lip were a raw red, her lower lip pulled between her teeth as she darts her eyes across the screen. She had the hood of a sweater pulled over her head, covering the red hair.

"Whose sweater is that?" Jade asked suddenly, not recognizing it.

The typing stopped and brown eyes flick up to green. "Cody's," Cat responds, clearing her throat after the name, keeping her eyes on the brunette. When she frowns at Cat, she goes on, "My cousin. He left it here before going back to Canada." Cat pulled back a blanket to show where the words _University of Toronto_ were bolded in black against grey fabric.

"Oh," Jade said, going back to her nails, biting down hard on her tongue when Cat's eyes remained on her.

Jade didn't expect her Saturday to consist of keeping watch over her sick friend. She had plans with Beck, but Cat's mom had called, asking her to stick around for the afternoon while she took Cat's brother to a doctor's appointment. So she was there, ready to not offer entertainment and dole out medication at 3 o'clock.

Jade looked at the clock.

"I'm gonna get your meds," she said, standing.

"Kay, kay," Cat mumbled.

In the kitchen Jade stood on her toes to scan through the cabinet over the sink. She took down a basket labeled _CAT_ and pulled sleeve after sleeve of pills out until she found decongestant. After another scan of the cabinet, Jade found the cough syrup. She walked back to Cat's room with the medication, a small measuring cup, and a glass of water.

Cat was blowing her nose when Jade reentered the room. She placed the measuring cup on Cat's nightstand and crouched to see it at eye level as she began to pour out the recommended dosage of cough syrup. After throwing her crumpled tissue toward the pink trash can near her desk - she misses - Cat took the glass of water and decongestant wordlessly, swallowing the pill with a mouthful of water.

"Here," Jade said, picking up the red liquid and handing it to Cat, "Drink up."

Cat licked her lips slowly, looking at the medicine.

"Take it," Jade urged, sitting back down on the end of the bed, looking intently at Cat.

"Give me a minute!" She said, voice cracking when it rose. She cleared her throat and downed the syrup like a shot, quickly gulping at the water in her other hand afterward.

Jade watched the faces she made, from disgust to relief, and looked back down at her nails in time to avoid brown eyes meeting hers. She heard Cat place the measuring cup and the empty glass on her night stand, then silence.

"Thanks," Cat said, her foot nudging Jade's leg under the blankets.

Jade swallowed. "No problem."

They sat for a long time, Jade feeling Cat's gaze on her as she looked at her nails. The air in the room felt thick in Jade's lungs. She gritted her teeth. She snapped her head up, meeting Cat's eyes, opening her mouth to say -

"Could you open the window?" Cat asked, letting out a little cough.

Jade blinked, closing her mouth. "Yeah," she said, standing to move over to the window, thankful her back was to Cat as blood pooled in her cheeks, her face heating.

Jade threw back the pink curtains, squinting at the sunlight, and undid the locks holding the window closed. A breeze pushed at her shirt as fresh air hurried in to replace the stuffiness in Cat's room.

"Thanks, Jade."

Jade kept her back to the girl until she composed herself.

"I'm gonna take a nap now, Jade."

"Ok," Jade said, staying still for another minute before turning towards the door. She had kicked aside a stuffed animal when Cat yawned,

"Love you, Jade."

Jade can't remember slamming a door harder in her life. And a bright pink one at that.


End file.
